France suspense
1953
bw 140 min.
Director: Henri Clouzot
CLV: $59.95 - available
2 discs, catalog # CC1244L
VHS: available from Home Vision Cinema
One
of cinema's most revered thrillers, La Saliare de la Peur or The Wages
of Fear is the acknowledged masterpiece of the brilliant French director
Henri-Georges Clouzot (1907-77). It is also the film that made popular music hall
singer Yves Montand into a movie star. Clouzot's sixth film and the predecessor
to his terror classic Diabolique, it was voted the Grand Prize at Cannes
in 1953 and Best Film of 1954 by the British Film Academy. Unfortunately, it was
excessively trimmed for United States distribution, in part because of scenes
that denounced American business interests for exploiting workers in Latin
America. As Parisian critic Pierre Kast protested at the time, "It is impossible
to remove a single episode without distorting the ultimate significance of the
film." Now, thirty-seven years later, Criterion proudly presents the full,
reassembled picture, Clouzot's stunning original cut. In this version, the early
sequences have their clarity restored, the characters are more fully developed,
and the film comes across as being much more political.Clouzot's ironic
suspense films are often compared to those of Alfred Hitchcock. But Wages of
Fear more recalls John Huston's 1948 Mexico-set The Treasure of the Sierra
Madre, another grim adventure about penniless men who seek quick riches to
escape their deadend existences. Clouzot's picture is also about courage and
cowardice and the expendibility and precariousness of human life. Sordid and
despairing as are the director's other films, Wages of Fear was adapted
from a novel by George Arnaud. Whereas Arnaud set his story in Guatemala,
Clouzot's existential film takes place in an unspecified Latin American country
and a fictional village, Las Piedras. The refuse of the earth find themselves in
this hellhole, though it's hard to figure out how anyone could wind up here. Now
everyone dreams of fleeing, but they haven't the money. Four tough vagabonds --
Corsican Montand, aging Parisian Charles Vanel, German Peter Van Eyck, and
fatally ill Italian Folco Lulli -- get the opportunity to escape the squalor when
an American fuel company offers them $2,000 each to hurriedly transport two
truckloads of nitroglycerine over 300 miles of hazardous mountain roads. The firm
figures that since these aren't union men, no one will squawk if they don't
survive the suicidal task.
The journey, which comprises the second half of the
film, is heartstopping. Three sequences rank with the most nerve-wracking in
movie history: the trucks must back onto rotting planks over a mountain ledge;
Van Eyck uses nitro to blow up a giant boulder that blocks the road; Montand
drives his truck through an expanding pool of spilled oil while Vanel swims in
the black liquid, clearing a path and trying to get out of the way. Georges
Auric's score and Armand Thirard's cinematography, which dramatically opposes
light and shadow, add to the tension. And Clouzot's editing style "based on
constant shocks," punctuates the narrative perfectly. Consequently, as the New
York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote, "You sit there waiting for the
theater to explode."
Clouzot considered Wages of Fear to be an epic
about courage. On the surface it is about how these four men test themselves for
money on the dangerous, death-defying drive. They try to exhibit grace under
pressure, be equal to their companions, be brave, be "men." They all succeed but
Vanel, who loses his nerve -- Jean Gabin turned down the part because he was
afraid to portray a coward (Vanel won the Best Actor award at Cannes). They
reveal admirable traits on their journey, convincing us that even the lives of
the dregs of society have worth. Still they don't warrant our respect -- though
Montand, Van Eyck, and Lulli extend it to each other -- because they were
irresponsible to have accepted this assignment. Brave or cowardly doesn't matter:
Death comes to everyone and is heroic for none. In this film, Clouzot viciously
attacks corporations that continually exploit individuals -- especially non-union
workers in Third World countries -- and let them gamble with their lives sop the
company profits. But he's equally disappointed in men such as our "heroes" who
risk their lives for all the wrong reasons. Ironically, placing money and
machismo over their own well-being puts them in complicity with the vile
companies that exploit them, and will thrive long after these men have been blown
to smithereens.
-- DANNY PEARY
Credits
Director: Henri-Georges
Clouzot
Executive Producer: Charles Borderie
Director of Photography:
Armand Thirard
Art Director: Rene Renoux
Music: Georges Auric
Producer:
R. Borderie, H.G. Clouzot
Assistant Director: Michel Romanoff
Sound:
William Robert Sivel
Editor: Henri Rust
Transfer
This edition of
Wages of Fear was transferred digitally from a 35mm print made from a
restored negative.
